ITALY: After the Merry-Go-Round?

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In the rich Po Valley and on the sunlit Roman plains, a strike call went out last week to 400,000 braccianti (landless farmhands). They wanted a nationwide contract, with better pay and job security, between their unions and the landowners. Months of collective bargaining had ended in deadlock—and Italy's most disturbing disorders since the Red riots of early 1948.

In some areas Communist agitators armed with guns and clubs rode out of cities in trucks to patrol country roads, force the braccianti into the strike. At Molinella, northeast of Bologna, they ambushed farmhands going to the fields, tangled savagely with carabinieri who came to the rescue. In the melee, a Red woman worker was shot dead. Twenty-seven anti-Red workers went to the hospital. One moaned: "Will it never end? Can one never work in peace?"

Not Today but Tomorrow. Communism in Italy was fishing diligently in the troubled waters of economic discontent. But it had no present hope of the great catch which seemed within its grasp a little more than a year ago. Then it had threatened to sweep the national elections and engulf democracy. Now it was in retreat, fighting guerrilla actions, terrorizing farmhands, harassing production, sniping at the Christian Democratic government of Premier Alcide de Gasperi.

A measure of the Red retreat was the steady decline in Communist Party membership (from 2,500,000 to 2,000,000 within the past six months). The party's prestige and influence had faded notice ably in its stronghold, the trade unions. "Today there is not much chance for us," admitted a Communist central committeeman in Rome last week. Then he added: "All we are doing is preparing for tomorrow." And the best hope for a Red tomorrow still lay in the plight of Italy's ill-paid, ill-fed, ill-housed masses.

Not Fear but Firmness. Christian Democrat de Gasperi understood the Red game. He also understood that democracy's first job had been to curb communism as a brass-knuckled force beyond the law. Despite Red violence in the farmhands' strike, he had established his government's authority.

In the past twelvemonth the nation's psychological climate had changed significantly. A bustle of hopeful activity hummed up & down Petrarch', "fair land which Apennines cut in twain "' seas and Alps surround." After a worrisome winter drought, the cypress groves of Tuscany and the rocky pastures of the south were turning a promising green under welcome rains. Along the Via Appia, middle-class families spread picnic lunches of bread, salami and strong red wine. From Venice to Capri hotels and restaurants looked forward to a season of 2,000,000 tourists, bringing American dollars and British pounds. The springtime wave of foreigners already crowded the sidewalk cafes of Rome's gay Via Veneto.

Along these same Roman sidewalks, in 1948's spring, Red mobs had marched with clenched fists and Marxist hymns. Last week the proprietor of a jewelry shop on the Piazza Colonna could say: "When the Reds called their last general strike [in February], they came to me and said,, 'You better close down.' I told them,

'You better not be here when the celere [riot squads] start moving.' They went away and I stayed open."